READING, PA.- A century ago, the noted Reading industrialist and philanthropist George Horst arrived to retrieve paintings that had long been loaned to the Reading Public Museum. It was with great regret that the founder of the Museum, Levi Mengel, surrendered them, with the hope that one day Horst might change his mind. While that never happened, now, a hundred years later, the Reading Public Museum is pleased to announce the return of one of these Horst paintings to its walls.

At a Freeman’s/Hindman auction in early June, the Reading Public Museum acquired the landscape painting Brown Hillside, which was painted by the American artist George Matthew Bruestle (1871/2 – 1939) in 1917. The atmospheric impressionist painting by Bruestle, which is characterized by bold visible brushstrokes, was exhibited in 1919 at the 114th Annual Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, which attracted entries from artists all over the nation. Bruestle was raised in New York City and studied art at the progressive Art Students League and spent time in Old Lyme, Connecticut at an artists’ colony that had been established by Henry Ward Ranger in 1899. He exhibited regularly at prestigious American art museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.

The work was once part of the impressive collection of paintings assembled by George D. Horst, Reading-area textile manufacturer. Horst had a taste for artists of the Barbizon School and both European and American Impressionists. He and co-proprietor Jacob Nolde, of Nolde & Horst, established and operated a successful hosiery factory in Berks County. Horst was a dedicated patron of the arts at the Reading Public Museum; that is, until The Museum made the decision in 1924 to build its iconic beaux-arts style structure in the City’s 18th Ward. Across the Schuylkill River, in what, at the time, seemed very remote from the core of the population, the site was donated by the founders of Horst’s major competitors, Henry Jannsen and Ferdinand Thun, owners of Berkshire Knitting Mills.

Horst had been consistently generous by lending and donating works to The Museum’s collection between 1914 and 1924, including outstanding examples by American painters N.C. Wyeth, Guy Carleton Wiggins, Alice Kent Stoddard, and Nancy Maybin Ferguson, among others. He also donated works by European masters such as Adolf Schreyer, Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, and Anton Mauve.

But when the decision was made to build in his competitor’s backyard as opposed to City Park in the urban fabric of Reading, Horst demanded the works he had on loan be returned at once. He labeled the new site for the construction of The Museum “a swamp in the City’s most remote corner.” Instead of ending up on the walls of RPM’s grand new structure, Horst erected a Tudor-style gallery on his private country property named Sheerlund Forests to house his collection of art. Horst’s expansive collection included paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Childe Hassam, Edward Redfield, Frank Benson, Daniel Garber, and Emil Carlsen.

Curator of Art, Scott A. Schweigert noted, “It feels somewhat poetic to have this lovely canvas by Bruestle come ‘back home’ to The Reading Public Museum after 100 years. The Museum tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase a few works back in 2014, when the George Horst collection was finally broken up. This recent ‘second chance’ acquisition helps to close a chapter on a controversial moment in The Museum’s history. I hope George D. Horst would be pleased with what we consider a happy ending.”

The painting, which has just arrived at The Museum, is now on special display in the Jerome I. Marcus Gallery of American Art so all the public can view and enjoy a work that a century ago left under such unusual circumstances.